Over the years, he has acquired a taste for challenging vacations. Amongst other exotic holidays, he has summited Mount Everest and K2, run across the Gobi Desert and the Amazon jungle, skied to the North Pole and been solo in the Arctic Circle in winter, climbed The Nose of El Capitan and endured temperature extremes from -50°C to +50°C.

He has also competed in multi-day races covering hundreds of kilometres in the jungles of Borneo, Tasmania, Canada, and faced hurricane winds off the Croatian Dalmatian coast in a flimsy kayak.

Before joining the private sector, Lien spent 14 years in the Singapore Army as a Special Forces officer, where he led teams ranging from small units of 10-men up to a 650-man battalion, and was deployed for peace-keeping duties to East Timor with the United Nations. He graduated from US Ranger school and US Marines’ training, and has partnered in military exercises with many regional Special Forces units.

He lays claim to being the ‘fastest old man in Asia’, being the Asian Masters 800m gold medallist in 2016, and in the process running faster at 38 than he did at 18.

Lien looks forward to sharing his stories of the interface between the 3Ms (McKinsey, Mountaineering and the Military), lessons learnt across different extreme sports, and in general trying not to bore the audience with another endless round of holiday pictures!